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Europeans keep it zipped about soccer sexploits

THE ASSISTANT manager of Manchester United took the call one Saturday night. "It was the News of the World," recalls Paddy Crerand, "and they had a story about Tommy Docherty, the manager, having an affair with Mary Brown, the wife of the club's physio." Docherty's most recent match in charge had been the victorious FA Cup final of 1977. It would be his last in the job.

Crerand recalls feeling "outrage", not at the intrusion into privacy, but at Docherty, a sentiment shared by enough of United's board that the manager was dismissed for breaking an important taboo in the collegiate world of sports teams. In the following months, players and other staff gradually began to relate the story to what they said was a duplicitous aspect to the character of Docherty, who married and remains married to the former Mrs Laurie Brown and would say he had been sacked